The Great Debate, Part 3

On September 29, 2006, The New York Sun's Ira Stoll headlined his article on the Great Debate, " 'Israel Lobby' Caused War in Iraq, September 11 Attacks, Professor Says." Stoll wrote, "Later, in response to a question from the audience, Mr. Mearsheimer claimed that the 'animus to the United States' of Qaeda terrorist mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed 'stemmed from U.S. foreign policy toward Israel.'" Using the word "claimed" is misleading; Stoll neglects to mention that Professor Mearsheimer was directly quoting from "The 9/11 Commission Report," as was the questioner, who had said, " On page 147 of 'The 9/11 Commission Report,' it states that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, mastermind of 9/11, says he attacked us because of our foreign policy bias towards Israel." Professor Mearsheimer happened to have a copy and responded by reading directly from "The 9/11 Commission Report," mentioning the page number 147 not once but twice: "By his own account, KSM's animus toward the United States stemmed not from his experiences there as a student, but rather from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel." Stoll never mentions "The 9/11 Commission Report" in his article. Certainly this is not what The Lobby cares to see in print. Indeed, in "Without Precedent...The Inside Story of The 9/11 Commission" by Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton, Co-Chairs of the 9/11 Commission, there is much evidence that U.S. foreign policy bias towards Israel served to motivate the 9/11 attackers. However, Lee Hamilton had a difficult time getting even a scant mention of this in the final report. Some commissioners were afraid that "listing U.S. support for Israel as a root cause of al Qaeda's opposition to the United States indicated that the United States should reassess that policy. To Lee, though, it was not a question of altering support for Israel but of merely stating a fact that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was central to the relations between the Islamic world and the United States---and to Bin Laden's ideology and the support he gained throughout the Islamic world for his jihad against America." ("Without Precedent" p. 284.)